Google is de-supporting its SOAP-based search API. This allowed programmatic access to the Google search results. It was a pretty lame API, partly because it was based on SOAP, but mostly because it had low quota limits.

More importantly, this is a harbinger of the death knell for the SOAP web services protocol (which was originally spear-headed by Microsoft). Along with ex-Googler Nelson Minar saying that he wouldn't use SOAP if he had to re-design the AdWords API, it's more evidence that the far simpler REST approach has won.